Scandalous novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Day One

Both pretend nothing happened while Burke lays down rules and his daughter Junie bursts in; Jillian's father calls and leaves her no way out, and Nolan hands her a hidden recorder. Hook: 'His private files. Friday week.'

He ran the meeting like nothing had happened.

I sat at the end of the table with a notebook and wrote down every word.

My hand was steady.

My heart was trying to leave through my throat.

"The Allegheny acquisition closes Thursday," Burke said. "Ms. Lowe will circulate the revised schedule."

He did not look at me when he said my name.

He did not look at me for fifty minutes.

When the executives filed out, he stayed seated and said, "Ms. Lowe. My office."

I followed him down a hallway of glass and gray carpet.

His office faced the three rivers, with a desk the size of a car.

He closed the door.

I stood very still in the middle of the room, waiting for him to say it.

"Last night," he said, "did not happen."

"Agreed."

"I don't sleep with people who work for me."

"You didn't know I worked for you."

"No," he said. "I didn't."

His jaw tightened, and for a moment he looked angrier at himself than at me.

"Your resume says two years at Arbor and Quill. Your references were warm. I was told you are organized and unflappable."

"I'm both."

"You were not unflappable last night." He stopped. "Which does not count."

I felt my face go hot, and I hated that he saw it.

"Rules," he said, in a flat, quiet voice. "You arrive at seven thirty. You do not take personal calls on my floor. You do not touch my calendar without asking. And you do not confuse being close to me with being allowed in."

"Allowed in where?"

"Anywhere I haven't opened the door to."

"Understood, Mr. Hartwell."

"Burke. Everyone here says Burke."

"Understood, Burke."

He looked at my mouth for a moment.

Then he looked at the window.

The door banged open.

A small girl in a green backpack stood in the doorway, breathing hard, with her braids coming loose.

"Dad, my nanny had a thing and the bus guy dropped me here and I said it was okay."

"Junie." Burke was across the room before I saw him move. "You can't just take a bus to my office."

"The bus guy said it was fine."

"The bus guy is going to be fired."

"He's not." She looked past him at me. "Are you the new one?"

"I'm Jillian."

"The last one cried."

"Junie."

"She did, Dad. In the elevator. She used three whole tissues."

I knelt so I was level with her.

She was about seven, with a gap where a front tooth had been and a very serious face.

"I don't cry at work," I said. "I save it for the car."

Her mouth twitched.

It wasn't a smile, but it was close enough that Burke went still.

"What's the car for?" she asked.

"Crying, singing, and eating french fries."

"I like french fries."

"Then you're an excellent judge of character."

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I didn't have to look.

I excused myself to the restroom, locked a stall, and answered in a whisper.

"Are you inside?" my father said.

His voice was loud and warm even at a whisper, the voice he used at company picnics.

"I'm in. I'm his assistant."

"That's my girl." He laughed. "Did he say anything about me?"

"No."

"Then he's afraid. Friday week, Jillian. The bank sells the house. Your mother has already started packing the china."

"I know, Dad."

"You do what Nolan tells you, and you do it well. That is not a request."

I leaned my forehead against the cool metal of the stall.

I could walk out right now.

Take the elevator down, and tell Nolan the plan was insane.

I had tried that, two weeks ago, at the kitchen table.

I had said no, and my father had set my mother's pill bottles on the tablecloth one by one and said what each one cost.

Then Nolan had slid the job application across to me.

My name was on a forged resume, in my own handwriting.

If I walked, the fraud was mine alone.

I thought of my mother wrapping plates in newspaper, her hands trembling.

And I thought of a man with a scar in his eyebrow, who had looked at me for one second too long, and who was my father's enemy and my boss.

"I'll get what you need," I said.

I did not say it because I wanted to.

I said it because my father had left me no other door.

I washed my hands and fixed my lipstick.

When I came out, Nolan Covington was waiting in the stairwell by the exit sign, in a charcoal suit and a ring on every finger of one hand.

He wasn't supposed to be in the building.

"He took you straight into his corner office," Nolan said, pleased. "Day one. That's better than I hoped."

"You can't be here."

"Your father wants the buy-out file from his private records, and the board minutes behind it." He smiled the way a closing door smiles. "Friday week, Jillian."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend